We’d been nervously watching the weather forecast ahead of this weekend, as it’s been cold, snowy, wet and windy, and more snow due at the weekend.
Unsurprisingly, the race organisers decided to cancel the race yesterday morning:
So, what to do? I’d started the carb loading (being greedy) that’s required ahead of a long run. As it was Saturday night, I was in three minds really:
- bin the idea of running this weekend, and get hammered
- run something shorter, keep close to home, and bail if needs be
- map out a 20 mile training run, grow a pair, and run it anyway
For some daft reason, I opted to only have a couple of beers, and go for option 3. Once our dinner party guests had gone home and I’d done the washing up, I sat down with the laptop, clicked onto the Mapometer website, and mapped out a route for me and Emma.
Emma’s running the London marathon on 21st April, so she was very keep to get a 20 mile run under the belt. A quick email exchange in the morning firmed up the plan.
The local weather forecast was pretty grim: light snow, -2c, 16-17mph winds, and a wind chill taking it down to -8c.
As soon as we got out there, if didn’t actually feel THAT cold, a good bit milder in fact. We started off slightly quicker than we should have – Emma’s desired marathon pace is 10 minute miles, so we settled into the pace quite well.
The weather started to get a bit worse – a lot of time it was snowing, but thankfully it wasn’t really settling. There was a bit of snow and ice on the ground in places, and a good few slushy puddles, most of which we managed to dodge.
We completed the first 10 miles of the run in 1:40, bang on the 10 minute mile pace. We slowed for a bit of a walk at 10 miles, took on an energy gel, and then carried on. The route was a bit of an out and back, with a couple of loops at either end. We turned at 11 and a bit miles, and turned back into a Baltic icy wind. Now that was tough. And wet.
We trucked on for a bit, and decided to have another little walk at 15 miles, and take on some energy gel. We actually ended up walking for a quarter of a mile, but it was a well needed rest. There is one problem with stopping to walk though, and that’s starting to run again! But run we did, until we hit mud.
In another route planning fail, I took us down a very muddy bridleway. On the mapping software, it was a named road, so I thought it would be OK. Unfortunately not. It was another mud mile – it was so slippery and treacherous that mile 16 took us 14:11 – I think the slowest I’ve ever covered a mile. The last few miles were a real struggle. I had to make us slow to a walk a couple of times – strategic walks as we call them – up a hill on the flyover, and again coming out of an underpass. Apart from that, we ran the whole 20 miles.
The good news is that it was 4:59 off the Oakley 20 mile race last year!
All in all, a good day out – a little bit of strategic walking.
No race photo’s I’m afraid, but I did take a couple of snaps when I got back. The fakes smile ever:
And “mud mile” made a right mess of my shoes and socks!
Here’s the link to my Garmin data:
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/288273523
The afternoon was spent having a long soak in the bath, tucking into a delicious Chinese, and a few beers to make up for going easy last night.